Book: “The Happiness Project” by Gretchen Rubin

“The Happiness Project” is Gretchen Rubin’s report of her year-long exercise to increase her happiness through self-discovery and trying various activities.

Rubin describes how she started with small “happiness resolutions”, with different (and more difficult) ones each month. For December, she decided to try to keep to all her resolutions from the whole year.

Rubin challenged herself to find out what her ‘rules’ were and how following them (or not) changed her happiness.

A part that stuck out to me was “you can’t choose what you like to do, you can only choose what you do“. What Rubin means is that forcing ourselves to do things we strongly dislike because we think we ‘should’ doesn’t increase happiness. For example, Rubin wants to be the kind of person who listens to cool jazz music rather than pop, perhaps because she feels that as an adult and professional that she ‘should’. But she doesn’t. So why did she force herself to listen to music she dislikes rather than accepting she likes what she does? Discovering this and accepting it provided a great example of how she could take control of her happiness.

Of course, some tasks are unavoidable. Rubin tries to reframe them and view them in ways that don’t drag down her mood. She finds ways to see pleasure in even mundane things, until the habit becomes second nature.

Rubin is flexible with her time and wealthy in a city with lots of opportunities, so her experience may seem unachievable. This book is less a “how to” guide than a “this is what I did” description. However, it might give some ideas of how to carry out your own “Happiness Project”, in ways that suit your lifestyle.

What rules do you live by? What do you do because you think you ‘should’ rather than because they make you happy? Are these things you can stop, or reframe? What made you happy to do as a child (acting, painting, singing?), and what caused you to stop? Could you start again?